Microsoft Tangled Up in Videotape Evidence

In the past few weeks the Microsoft trial had been in danger
of slipping out of the public eye. Its endless procession of
less-than-riveting economics professors and forgetful
executives, mixed with scads of legal and technical
split hairs, just hasn’t made for gripping headlines. But on
Tuesday the government’s point man, David Boies,
suggested in court that a videotape offered as evidence by
Microsoft had been altered, and as soon as Bill Gates’s
team had wriggled out from under that one, yet more doubts
about the tape cropped up. Did Microsoft really try to slip
faked evidence into the courtroom?

Of course, there’s nothing the media -- or the prosecution, for
that matter -- likes better than a little doctored tape. The
videotaped demonstration was intended to demonstrate that
removing Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser from a
computer running the Windows 98 operating system would
make that machine run significantly more slowly. This would
support Microsoft’s point that the browser was an integral
part of the operating system, and thus that Microsoft couldn’t
be accused of leveraging its near-monopoly on operating
systems to gain market share for its browser. MORE>>